has by implication well observed in his account of the Athenian overestimate of Nicias) that there was something essentially defective in the moral conceptions which could allow the mass of an highly sensitive and intellectual nation to witness unmoved such a spectacle-vouchsafed only once in many centuries, and then vouchsafed in its general manifestations for a long course of thirty years, and in its most striking manifestation at the very moment of the trial itself. They admired Nicias because he came up to the level of their own ideal; they condemned Socrates because he passed so far beyond it that they were unable even to understand him. And if, as Mr. Grote believes, the Athenian people never repented of their act, still the almost contemporary protests of Plato and Xenophon justify the usual light in which that act has been regarded by the accordant voice of posterity.

Although to speak of Socrates and omit his philosophy may almost seem like acting Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark, we have already said that the fit handling of this great subject belongs to the history of Greek philosophy as a whole, and that till Mr. Grote has brought us to its close, it is hardly fair to him or to our readers to exhibit an isolated portion, however important. It is sufficient to remember that, although the hope of successors in his peculiar method, which sustained Socrates in his last hours, was never realized, yet the impulse which he gave was never lost. The revolution which he had effected is still in operation in every part of the civilized world

'Whatever may have been the success of Protagoras or any other among the sophists, the mighty originality of Sokratês achieved results not only equal at the time, but incomparably grander and more lasting in reference to the future. Out of his intellectual school sprang not merely Plato (himself a host) but all the other leaders of Grecian speculation for the next half-century, and all those who continued the great line of speculative philosophy down to later times. Eukleidês and the Megaric school of philosophers-Aristippus and the Kyrenaic -Antisthenes and Diogenês, the first of those called the Cynics-all emanated more or less directly from the stimulus imparted by Sokratês, though each followed a different vein of thought. Ethics continue to be what Sokratês had first made them, a distinct branch of philosophy, alongside of which politics, rhetoric, logic, and other speculations relating to man and society, gradually arranged themselves; all of them more popular, as well as more keenly controverted, than physics, which at that time presented comparatively little charm, and still less of attainable certainty. There can be no doubt that the individual influence of Sokratês permanently enlarged the horizon, improved the method, and multiplied the ascendent minds of the Grecian speculative world, in a manner never since paralleled. Subsequent philosophers

philosophers may have had a more elaborate doctrine, and a larger number of disciples who imbibed their ideas; but none of them applied the same stimulating method with the same efficacy-none of them struck out of other minds that fire which sets light to original thought -none of them either produced in others the pains of intellectual pregnancy, or extracted from others the fresh and unborrowed offspring of a really parturient mind.'-viii. p. 621.

But although declining for the present to follow Mr. Grote on this track, we cannot part with him without resting for a few moments on some of those more general reflexions which his treatment of the invididual life of Socrates suggests.

There is one point of view in which the career of Socrates has always possessed an interest, perhaps too sacred to be dwelt upon in these pages, but to which Mr. Grote's representation almost of necessity invites the thoughtful reader. We have always felt, and he has made us feel more strongly than ever, that, in studying the character and life of Socrates, we are studying the most remarkable moral phenomenon in the ancient world. We are conscious of having climbed the highest point of the ascent of heathen virtue and wisdom; we find ourselves in a presence which invests with an interest approaching to sublimity all that relates to it. We feel that here alone, or almost alone, in the Grecian world, we are breathing an atmosphere, not merely moral, but religious, not merely religious (it may be a strong expression, yet we are borne out by the authority of the earliest Fathers of the Church*), not merely religious, but Christian. Difficult as it was to escape from these associations under any circumstances, the language of Mr. Grote has now rendered it all but impossible. The startling phrases which he uses, as alone adequate to the occasion, are dictated by the necessity of the case; and when we are told that Socrates was a cross-examining missionary'-that he spent his life in public apostolic dialectics that he was habitually actuated by his persuasion of a special religious mission,' we are at once carried forward from the age of Socrates himself to that more sacred age, from which these expressions are borrowed, and by which alone we are enabled fully to appreciate and recognize what Socrates was and did.

Of those comparisons which have again and again been instituted between the life and death of the Athenian sage, and that Divine life and death which admits of no equal or parallel, it has indeed been truly said, 'If Christ were no more than a Socrates, then a Socrates he was not.' To compare is in such a case to misconceive relations which are in fact incommensurable. Still

* See Justin Martyr.

we

we cannot wonder that such comparisons should have been suggested, and, if viewed aright, there are few more remarkable illustrations of the reality of the Gospel history, than the light which, by way of contrast or likeness, is thrown upon it by the highest example of Greek antiquity. It is instructive to observe that there alone on no lower level before or since-in that climax and crisis of the human development of ancient times is to be found the only career which, at however remote a distance, suggests whether to friends or enemies any real illustration of the One Life, which is the turning point of the history of the whole world. When we contemplate the contented poverty, the self-devotion, the publicity, of the career of Socrates, we feel that we can understand better than before the outward aspect at least of that Sacred Presence which moved on the busy shores of the sea of Galilee, and in the streets and courts of Jerusalem. When we read the last conversations of the prisoner in the Athenian dungeon, our thoughts almost insensibly rise to the parting discourses in the upper chamber at Jerusalem, and we remember with gratitude and reverential awe the uncertainty-the waveringthe dark future of the philosophic speculations, when contrasted with the unbroken repose and confidence which pervades every word of the Divine assurances. Or (to turn to another side) when we are perplexed by the difficulty of reconciling the narrative of the three first Evangelists, with the altered tone of the fourth, it is at least a step towards the solution of that difficulty to remember that there is here a parallel diversity of narrative, which so far from destroying the historical truth of the whole representation, has rather confirmed it; the Socrates of Xenophon is widely different from the Socrates of Plato, and yet no one has been tempted by that diversity to doubt the substantial identity-the true character -much less the historical existence of the master whom they both profess to describe. Nor when we think of the total silence of Josephus, or of other contemporary writers, respecting the events which we now regard as the greatest in the history of mankind, is it altogether irrelevant to reflect that for the whole thirty years which Thucydides comprises in his work, Socrates was not only living, but acting a more public part, and, for all the future history of Greece, an incomparably more important part than any other Athenian citizen; and yet that so able and so thoughtful an observer as Thucydides has never once noticed him directly or indirectly. There is no stronger proof of the weakness of the argument from omission, especially in the case of ancient history which, unlike our own, contained within its range of vision no more than was immediately before it for the moment.

If we descend from this higher ground to those lower but still

lofty

lofty regions of Christian history, to which perhaps Mr. Grote's language more naturally and irresistibly leads us, the illustrations supplied by the life of Socrates are still more apposite and instructive. When we are reminded of the apostolic' selfdevotion of Socrates a new light seems to break on the character and career of him from whose life that expression is especially derived; and the glowing language in which Mr. Grote describes the energy and the enthusiasm of the Athenian missionary enables us to realize with greater force than ever the pureness, and knowledge, and love unfeigned' of the missionary of a far higher cause, who stood and argued in the very market-place where Socrates had conversed 450 years before, and was, like him, accused of being 'a vain babbler' and 'a setter-forth of strange gods.' And even in minute detail there is nothing which more forcibly illustrates some of the passages of the Apostle's life than the corresponding features in the career of the philosopher. How much more vividly, for example, do we understand the relation of St. Paul, himself a rabbi, to the teachers of his time, at once belonging to them and distinct from them, when we contemplate in Mr. Grote's representations the like relation of Socrates to the Sophists! How striking is the coincidence between the indignant refusal of St. Paul in these very cities of Athens and Corinth to receive remuneration for his labours, and the similar protest of Socrates, by precept and example, against the paid teaching of the great mass of the philosophers of his own time! And lastly, how remarkably is the vulgar feeling of the Roman world towards the Apostles and their converts illustrated by the vulgar feeling of the Athenian world towards Socrates and his pupils. In the attack which was made at two distinct periods on Alcibiades and on Socrates, we see the union of the great mass of Athenian society, both democratical and aristocratical, against what they conceived to be revolutionary, and against men both of whom were obnoxious because they towered above their age. As in the alleged plot of the mutilation of the Hermæ, Thessalus, the son of the aristocratic Cimon, and Androcles, the demagogue, both united against Alcibiades in the charge of overthrowing the constitution and establishing a tyranny-so Aristophanes, the poet of the aristocracy, and Anytus, the companion of the exiled leader of the popular party, combined in bringing against Socrates the charge of overthrowing mythology and establishing atheism. In each case there was a real movement to be discovered-if the prosecutors could have discovered it. Alcibiades was at work on designs which might have dissolved the existing bonds of society at Athens, and perhaps made him its ruler and tyrant. Socrates was at work on designs which would

ultimately

ultimately tend to place the religion and morality of Greece on a totally new foundation. They failed to convict Alcibiades, because his plans were not yet fully developed; they failed to convict Socrates justly, because his design was one which none but the noblest minds could understand. So far there was a resemblance between the two cases-a resemblance of which the enemies of Socrates made the most. But, as every one now recognizes, the difference was far wider. Alcibiades was really what he was taken to be, the representative of all that was worst in the teaching of the Sophists of all that was most hostile to morality and religion. Socrates, whilst formally belonging to the Sophists, was really the champion of all that was most true and most holy; and he fell a victim to the blindness which in all great movements has again and again confounded two elements most dissimilar because they both happened to be opposed to the prevailing opinion of the time.

We have reminded our readers of this juxta-position because there is no passage in history which more happily illustrates the position which was taken up against the Christian apostles and missionaries of the first and second centuries-a position which has not unfrequently been overlooked or misapprehended. 'Christianity,' as has been well remarked, 'shared the common lot of every great moral change which has ever taken place in human society, by containing amongst its supporters men who were morally the extreme opposites of each other.' No careful reader of the Epistles can fail to perceive the constant struggle which the Apostles had to maintain, not only against the Jew and the heathen external to the Christian society, but against the wild and licentious heresies which took shelter within it. The same confusion which had taken place in the Athenian mind in the case of Socrates and Alcibiades, took place in the first century of the Christian era with regard to the Apostles and the heresiarchs of the Christian Church. St. Paul and Hymenæus were to all outward appearance on the same side, both equally bent on revolutionizing the existing order of civil society. As Aristophanes could not distinguish between the licentious arguments of the wilder class of sophists and the elevating and inspiring philosophy of Socrates, so Tacitus could not distinguish between the anarchists whom St. Paul and St. Peter were labouring to repress, and the pure morality and faith which they were labouring to propagate. He regarded them both as belonging to an execrable race,' hateful for their abominable crimes;' and as the Greek poet could see nothing but an atheist in Socrates, so the Roman historian would have joined in the cry, Away with the atheists,' which was raised against the first Christians. In each case the

VOL. LXXXVIII. NO. CLXXV.

F

next